Viva rating: * * * *
Where: 168 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna
Ph:(09) 489 9510
Open: Lunch, dinner, Tue-Sun
Cuisine: Bistro
From the menu: rilled chicken salad, artichoke hearts, lemon honey dressing $17.50; Honey glazed ham, potato mash, honey mustard sauce $24.50; Knickerbocker glory $12.50
Vegetarian: Options on menu
Wine: Small, informed list
KEY POINTS:
The gods must be smiling. The parking gods and the restaurant gods. After crawling across the bridge at peak hour, negotiating downtown Takapuna, there is one space free in crowded Hurstmere Rd. And it is right outside the restaurant where we want to eat.
Chances of a table aren't as promising. Jude phoned this afternoon and they don't take bookings. The place is full and the maitre d' tells me there could be half an hour's wait ...
But one couple are prepared to move outside! We can have their table inside.
Open less than a month, just gone 6.30pm, the waitress and maitre d' are turning people away. As they will do to a steady stream of would-be punters until we leave about 8.30pm. Restaurateurs across Auckland would kill to have this problem.
Mind you, the eating-out business is booming across the northern harbour. Much is like Hurstmere Rd, its barns of One Red Dog, Praxis, R'toto et al: "never mind the quality, feel the width of the steak" stuff.
Natalia Schamroth's Engine Room and Lindsey Swannack's Eight Point Two (or 8.2, you figure it out) lifted the suburbs' standards; Sonya Paget, ex-Stamford Plaza and The George, is charming Mairangi Bay with her bistro, The Narrow Room.
But this is the night of Wine & Roses. Once inside, it's obvious why it's so hard to get a seat: only seven tables; and it's the new venture from Martina Lutz, elegant hostess of Number 5, formerly the Wine Loft and currently the Wine Chambers in the other CBD across the bridge. The maitre d' is her son, Falk.
Lutz long ago mastered the art of superior home-cooking, long ago at Merlot Wine Cafe in O'Connell St, across the road from her gracious Wine Chambers. There she teamed with John Ingle, one of the city's most enthusiastic sommeliers, whose hand is obvious in the small but remarkably informed wine list here.
That's the motto for everything about Wine & Roses. As well as the room and the cellar, the menu has just four starters, three pastas, and five mains. Each dish is simply, rigorously and consistently constructed.
Three hungry city-siders meant the slimline menu would get a thorough going-over. Even more so when we found everything was half-price for the first four weeks and we were two nights inside the deadline. Customer feedback is requested. Excellent way to launch a restaurant.
Sian was on a prawn binge: chilli beasts on bruschetta to start, with pumpkin in risotto to follow. Jude lit into the seafood, too, with a seared scallop and pancetta salad starter and hapuka as her main. I opted for mushrooms dressed with blue cheese and pine nuts, pork schnitzel and potato salad to follow.
Have to confess there was more bingeing when the dessert menu was passed around. Sian teased us with Black Forest ice cream (we were supposed to share the cherries but they seemed to disappear before anything materialised) and my lemon sorbet in champagne was, hell, worth coming to the Shore for.
Jude demanded Hot Love. Sian and I thought this was a cute menu headline but she insisted it was the authentic name of a dessert from Austria or Germany, involving vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and liqueured-up raspberries. And that she only wanted to remind herself of some long-ago skiing trip, where she'd first enjoyed this experience.
I won't pretend this was the gastronomic event of a lifetime (since you ask, Tetsuya's). It delivered exactly what the front page of the menu promised. "You know what you want: you are looking for consistency, friendliness, a clean environment and value for money, and a local eatery you can return to with confidence."
Which is exactly what we got. Lordy me, a restaurant that knows what it wants to be and delivers on its promises. With a youthful staff and the desire to please that comes with that.
The rest was up to us, to our conversation and the enjoyment of good food and wine and an evening out together. Which is what we had. Just what a neighbourhood bistro should be.
